How to Grow your Salon Business!

 

The Salon industry is one of the fastest growing in the UK showing a growth of 54% in the number of businesses in the 5 years up to 2020. Though this slowed down due to the pandemic, this industry has seemingly bounced back after the lockdown and is on the rise again.

To make sure your salon is taking advantage of this and growing with the rest of your industry, here are some of our top tips and tricks to push growth in you Salon.

 

Utilise Social Media

If you’re running a salon, social media such as Facebook and Instagram should be your best friend. These platforms are great ways to communicate with your customers and also promote your salon for free. By sharing before and after photos of your work on social media you can show people who may have not been to your salon the type of work you do and encourage them to come in for an appointment. This means you can use social media to grow your customer base.

Social media is also a great way to communicate and interact with your existing customers with many salon customers saying they feel more comfortable going into a salon where they can see the workers personality and communicate with them online.

A final use for social media is to run things such as competitions. You could run a competition for a free retail product or a free appointment and get entrants to share the post and tag some friends. This would mean that your customers are doing the free marketing for you and sharing your business with their friends.

If you want some more tips on how social media can help your salon, go to www.salontracker.co.uk/news and search for social media and you will be able to see all of the blogs we have done on this topic.

Reward Loyal Clients

As well as wanting new customers in your salon, client retention is important too and what better way to do this than to reward your most loyal clients. One way Salon Tracker can help you do this is with our groups feature. This feature allows you to add your customers into specific groups, for example a VIP customer group, and you can give them a set discount on bookings and retail products.

You can also do offers such as buy one get one free and buy 5 for the price of 4 which the system can help you track. Give us a call to see how this could work for you.

Ask for Reviews

Another way you can grow your salons customer base is to ask your existing customers to leave you reviews on platforms such as Facebook, Google or YELL. Having reviews from verified customers of your salon will help shed good light on what your salon offers. One way Salon Tracker can help you encourage your clients to leave you a review is with our ‘request a review’ feature which sends a text to your customers after their appointment asking them to leave a review on whichever site that you prefer.

 

If you would like any more information on the features detailed in this blog or if you would like to get booked in for a free demonstration and two-week trial, please don’t hesitate to give us a call on 0113 350 8230 or email info@salontracker.co.uk.

 

Salon Tracker x

Bank Holiday Marketing

 

As I’m sure you’re all aware, the first bank holiday of Spring 2022 is fast approaching. With this in mind here at Salon Tracker we thought we would give you some of our best tips and tricks on how you can market your salon to make the most of these upcoming long weekends.

 

Social Media

One of the easiest, and sometimes most effective, ways of advertising your salon is to do this on social media. Having an active account on social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram is a key part to running a successful salon in 2022. The good thing about social media is that you can use it in whatever way suits your salon best. Some key things that you can use social media for in your salon are:

·         Posting pictures of the services that you offer to show clients what you provide.

·         Running competitions to gain interaction from customers.

·         Communicating with new and existing customers to give your salon a friendly vibe.

SMS Marketing

Another way you can market your salon is through text message marketing. This is a very effective form of marketing as text messages have a 98% open rate. With Salon Trackers professional package and above you can do a text message marketing campaign directly from Salon Trackers intelligent marketing suite. 

Here are some examples of text messages you can send out to your customers to try and get them to visit your salon.

Hi <<Forename>>

EASTER WEEKEND IS HERE!

Free Tan Accelerator Sachet when any course is bought Fri-Mon!

<<CompanyName>> <<CompanyTel>> T&Cs Apply

 

Hi <<Forename>>

Long Weekend = Longer Opening Hours

This weekend only we've extended our opening hours until 9 so get booked in quick!

<<CompanyName>>

 

Hi <<Forename>>

Bank Hol is here, get booked in quick so you're ready for your night out. Gel polish on hands and toes just £30 this weekend!

<<CompanyName>>

Email Marketing

Another great marketing option for your salon is email marketing. In Salon Trackers marketing suite, you can grab a list of customers who have opted in for email marketing and export them into a CSV file which you can put into a free email campaign provider such as Mailchimp. Mailchimp allows you to send an email to up to 2000 people completely free of charge. You can design this email to match your salon theme and send them as often as you would like!

 

If you would like any more information on Salon Trackers Intelligent marketing suite, please don’t hesitate to contact us on 0113 350 8230 or email us on info@salontracker.co.uk.

 

Salon Tracker x

SMS & Email marketing tips and tricks!

With SMS open rates being 98%, there is no better time than now to push SMS marketing! Which is why we've put this blog together to demonstrate how you can effectively use our marketing suite.

If you are on our Professional and Enterprise package, you're probably familiar with our marketing suite where you can target a specific range of customers and send them either a text directly from the software or use mail chimp to upload this list of contacts and send them an email! Either way, I bet you wasn't aware of the exact filters you can use on the software to precisely target your customers.

Alerting your customers their booking services are due to expire

The software has a clever way of monitoring your clients booking services such as tanning minutes remaining or beauty packages remaining. As a result of this, you can send out a text directly to those whose minutes are due to expire in any set time frame, whether that's the next month, 3 months or 6 months!

This will then encourage your customers to come back in the salon and use up their minutes thus resulting in them purchasing more and so on!

To use this filter go to:

Marketing > Filters > select 'Alert customers their bookable services will expire' > select dates to what you would like it to be e.g next 3 months or next 6 months > change the 'next month' to the time frame you would like also > apply filter > send SMS. 

The text is already pre-written for you but if you want to change the next please be aware it will need to be under 160 characters for it to be classed as 1 SMS credit. You can also preview the text to your own phone using the 'Preview Mobile Tel' box to input your number then press the phone mail symbol on the right hand side to make sure you are happy with the text!

Push your online booking for those customers who haven't booked online yet!

Moving from making bookings manually on the phone to using an online booking system can be a drastic change for both Salon owners and Salon Clients. Some may resist to the change and prefer to ring up themselves and do it which as you all know, can be very time consuming! So for those customers you're struggling to get using online booking, we've got you covered with a marketing filter!

Offering a simple gesture of just 10% off or £5 off can work wonders for encouraging your customers to book online, once they've done it they'll find it easier to continue doing therefore saving you time and utilising your online booking to its best ability!

Go to:

Marketing > Filters > select 'customers not online' > apply filter.

Give something back to your best spending customers

Whether you want to send it to your Salons best spending customers in general or for your self employed staffs' own customers the extensive filter selection has both covered!

That way your loyal customers will feel appreciated and will be more inclined to return whilst encouraging them to recommend you to other people!

To do this:

Marketing > Filters > select 'Custom - create your own marketing campaign' > select 'best customer by spend' drop down > select your preference e.g 'best 10' then click apply filter. If you want to use it for your self employed staff then use the + button to add another filter row and use the dropdown to select 'customer by bookable item' then use the other drop down to select the correct booking item.

Birthday texts

Everybody loves to receive a birthday text, especially when it has an offer in it! The software has 2 types of pre-made filters for your customers with birthdays coming up. 1 is made for all customers called 'birthday gift message' and the other is for your high spending customers with birthdays coming up called 'birthday gift message for high spending customers'. It's up to you which you choose - whether you're feeling generous or extra generous - we've got you covered with this filter. 

A birthday gift doesn't have to be a lot either, it could be small voucher or even a percentage off but if your clients get that extra personalised touch - big or small it's bound to work wonders for you. You can even get extra personal and categorise the texts for genders, e.g men could get a free haircut for their birthday and women could be given a free manicure.

To do this:

Marketing > Filters > select 'birthday gift message' > change the 'next month' drop down to what you would want it to be > apply filter. 

For customers who haven't visited in a while

Life happens, things get in the way and self-care becomes a thing of the past for some people. Well why not give them that gentle reminder to say that you miss them and would love to see them back in the salon? 

You have probably forgotten about half of the customers that you've had in the salon once and haven't been in again yet. Lucky for you - the software cleverly recalls these for you, down to the exact date they were last in. So if you're having a bit of a quiet period and need that extra push, use the 'for customers who haven't visited in a while' filter and go for the 'last year' or 'last 2 years' filter which will then provide you with a list of people that haven't visited the salon in that time frame. Entice them in with 10% off which will bring them in and encourage them to return, therefore boosting revenue and keeping you busy!

To do this:

Marketing > Filters > select 'for customers who haven't visited in a while' > change dates to your preference (1-2 years normally works quite well) > apply filter.

If you would prefer to use email marketing, all these filters can still be used but instead of clicking 'send SMS' you would click 'send email' which will then export the list of clients into a .csv file which can then be uploaded directly to mail chimp! 

Learning new things can be quite daunting and we get that, that's why we offer free training with your monthly software subscription which can be booked whenever you need it! Just call us on 0113 350 8230 or alternatively drop us an email at info@salontracker.co.uk.

New to our blog page and want to give the software a go? Register for your free demo and 2 week trial here: FREE DEMO & TRIAL

Salon Tracker x

  

Planning for the year

January is often a quieter period in Salons after the mad rush of Christmas, so there is no better time than now to plan for the year ahead. At Salon Tracker, we believe that the best way to approach marketing for the year is to plan around the different holidays and target these periods specifically.

The first few months of the year are always the cold ones, and there’s no better time to visit the salon. Often this can be a quieter time for tanning salons so why not offer some special courses during this time and build your client base ready for the summer. For beauty and hair salons, you may have seen an increase in gift voucher purchases over the Christmas period, so why not encourage your customers to use these now. Also, customers will be trying to fulfil their new year’s resolutions, so what better way to have a ‘new year, new me’ moment that by getting a new hairstyle or having a pamper.

Other major events to center your promotion around during this time are Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. Before you start advertising around these days, why not look at previous years and see which of your treatments are most commonly purchased around these periods, and create special packages featuring a few of these at a reduced price. Also, why not create some hampers featuring some of your retail products as well as a gift voucher. You may even want to do a little complimentary fizz with all services booked in the week leading up to, and week after Mother’s Day, to make the client’s service seem a little more luxury!

The next period is filled with bank holidays (1th April, 18^th April, 2^nd May, 2^nd June, 3^rd June) which means customers will be going out and need to be booked in for their pre-outing pampers. This is prime-time for salons, so now may be a good time to push your service packages, for example; if you are a hair and beauty salon you may want to do an ‘Bank Holiday Bundle’ consisting of a couple of mini beauty treatments and maybe a hair style? This year we’ve gained an extra bank holiday due to the Queen’s Jubilee. It’s a great marketing technique to promote the extra Bank Holiday date, as believe it or not there will be a lot of your clients who are still unaware of the Bank Holiday change, so make sure you get in there first to get your calendars booked up.

Going from Spring to Summer, Wedding season will be approaching, as well as proms and graduations. All of these events will drive customers into your salons, whether it be for a fresh tan (spray or real), or for a makeover. Targeting your audience is essential to ensure that your diary is filled to the brim, so why not try something new. Maybe offer a raffle entry for every treatment purchased with the winning prize being a free makeover for their special day. Alternatively, you could offer a trial day at a reduced cost so customers can see how they’ll look at on the big day and minimise the stress on the actual day. This would mean they’re visiting the salon more often and may be more inclined to do so again in the future.

Also, during the summer period, people will be jetting away on holidays after being limited so much over the past two years. What better way to get their tans started than by offering special courses to encourage them into the salon before they go away. Soon enough we will be back around to the autumn/winter period and then it will be time to start looking at Halloween makeovers and Christmas party prep.

Hope this has given you a few pointers to think about, and of course as always if you want to chat to a member of our sales and marketing team for a few extra tips, we are always on hand to help you with any marketing tools, or simply to offer further advice on using our software functions!

Salon Tracker x

Why is an online presence beneficial for your salon?

What is an online presence

An online presence is defined as how easy it is to find the business when a client is searching for keywords relevant to your business on the internet. Having an online presence allows your clients to interact with the businesses virtual presence to find out more information about the salon brand, its products and services. An online presence allows your salon to be visible on the internet as well as a range of different social media pages which means tat your salon is more discoverable to potential clients. To maintain your online presence, it is essential that you have a desirable webpage and the basic social media platforms that you are continuously active on.

Why is online presence important

An online presence is important for your salon as it allows you to reinforce your brand as you are able to constantly boost your salons image. Constant updates on social media and maintaining your online presence allows your salon to attract new clients and retain pre-existing customers. Online presence is extremely important for small business owners it could potentially provide the salon with the means to grow their client base. This also allows your salon clients to review relevant information such as salon opening hours, location of the salon and the reviews left in regards to the salon done by previous customers. Clients are able to browse the pricing of your services that your salon offers before booking therefore allowing clients enhanced accessibility to your business. Having a greater online presence allows your salon access to a wider audience as your business information will be accessible to clients 24 hours a day seven days a week. You are also able to communicate with your clients continuously through social media therefore allowing you to build customer relationships and trust.

Ways to strengthen your online presence

There are plenty of ways to strengthen your online presence one way to do so would be to optimize your business website, when you are creating or editing the website it would be beneficial for you to use key words that clients will be searching to find a business like yours. Ensure that you and your staff members create many engaging marketing content this includes things such as blogs, videos and social media posts and post them of a range of different platforms to build the chances of reaching out to new clients, you must ensure that you focus on the channels that best suit your target audience. Video marketing will allow you to showcase the benefits of using your salon as well as the services that you offer in a new and attractive way. Focusing on your brand purpose is another method that enables you to strengthen your businesses online presence as you can build a community to interact with clients and other salons this will enable you to promote your brand values as well as allowing you to share a clear consistent and compelling brand story across the content you share. It is important that you make certain that client reviews are continuously up to date online and you encourage your clients to leave a review so that you can further improve your services as this will increase the salons credibility as word of mouth is one of the most common strategies that businesses use to attract potential clients. Boost your search engine optimization to promote your online presence by email marketing, developing your website further and posting content on social media constantly. Many online tools enable you access to data and analytics to help you understand your target audience, their behaviour and preferences and how they experience your business at every stage of the customer journey. It is important that you take this information to measure the effectiveness of using a range of online marketing channels to develop a strategy that works for your brand.

The advantages of online presence

There are many advantages to having a strong online presence this includes the improvement of customer service by being able to interact with them directly converse with them through social media platforms. Your salon is also able to gain referrals through social proof this includes client reviews and images you and your staff members upload of the services you have carried out. Online marketing is an easy and affordable way to market your salon therefore permitting the company to spend the money they have saved from marketing onto other aspects of the salon such as improving the quality of products meaning the salon receives larger amount of profits with limited investment. Having a range of different social media platforms allows you to reach out to a larger audience meaning that more people will be aware of your business. Another advantage of your salon having an online presence is the trust factor that you will secure with potential clients as they will check online to ensure that you are reliable and can trust your brand. Online presence also allows you to view your competition and see what you are able to do different to distinguish your salon from others in your surrounding area.

The disadvantages of online presence

Online marketing is not effective when used alone without another marketing technique as it can be unreliable as the internet can go down, systems can crash therefore it’s not 100% dependable. Another disadvantage to having a strong online presence is that it exposes the company to spam messages and content. Having online accounts paves the way clients and other individuals to leave bad reviews that will tarnish your salon reputation.

I hope this blog has been informative and beneficial for you, make sure to keep continuously posting on your social medias.

Salon Tracker Team. X

Who can Salon Tracker Integrate with?

Though our booking system had many different features, there are some things that you may need to help your salon run smoothly that we don’t offer. This is why we have partnered with some different companies and integrated their services into our system so you can run your salon in the simplest way possible.

Dojo

When it comes to card payments, Salon Tracker can directly integrate with Dojo Payment Terminals. How this works is once your card terminal is connected to your Salon Tracker by a member of our team, when you select the card payment option on the system this will send the correct amount directly through to your card terminal. This integration reduces the risk of error when typing in the payment amount and also means that there will be no discrepancies between your Salon Tracker reports and your end of day reports from your PDQ machine. If you would like to get this integrated just let us know and we can pass over your details to our account manager at Dojo Payment Sense!

TMAX/Sigma Sunbed Timers

One of our most popular features with our tanning salon customers is the integration with TMAX and Sigma timer managers. On our professional package and above we offer tanning salons the ability to connect the timer manager. This works by plugging your timer manager into the PC using a USB to serial cable and means that you can send tanning minutes through to the sunbed from your PC. This reduces work load and also makes it easier to track how many minutes each bed has done for when you need to retube your beds! This feature also lets you set bespoke, dress down and cool down times for your beds.

Mailchimp

For all your marketing needs, you can integrate your Salon Tracker Professional and Enterprise accounts to mailchimp.  In Salon Trackers bespoke marketing suite, you can filter out different customer groups which you would like to market to, for example your best spending customers or customers who haven’t visited in a while. You can then input this information into Mailchimp and send out a marketing campaign to these customers for free! If you would like any training on how to do this at all please just let us know!

Geo-Code

One small, but very useful feature, that has been implemented into Salon Tracker is the Geo- Code. This feature allows you to put in your customers post code and automatically find their address. All you need to do this is an active google account and we’ll link your account up to your salon tracker.

Social Media

Whilst Salon Tracker doesn’t directly integrate with your salon’s social media accounts, there is ways around this for things such as your online booking site and also reviews. You can add your link to your social media pages, such as Instagram or Facebook so your customer can easily find your online booking site. Also, within Salon Tracker you can send your customers an SMS message asking them to leave you a review on social media or google.

 

If you would like any help on setting any of these integrations up or if you would like any more information on any of these please don’t hesitate to get in contact with a member of our team on 0113 350 8230 or email info@salontracker.co.uk

Remember if you visited us at Professional Beauty London this year to give us a call and get booked in for your free demo and two-week trial so you can claim your show offer!

Salon Tracker x

Autumn Marketing

 

This Autumn is completely different to last years in that we are not in lockdown and everything is open. So, now is the perfect opportunity to take full advantage of Autumnal offers and really push the boat out with marketing.

Decorations and Outfits

One of the simplest ways to get into the Autumnal spirit is to decorate the salon. Whether you prefer the traditional Autumn vibe with pumpkins and warm tones, or if you want to go more towards a Halloween theme and accessorise with Ghosts and Bats, refreshing your décor is something that will surely put a smile on your customers’ faces. Window displays are a particularly good way of advertising as not only do they appeal to your currents customers but they can also draw in the attention of people passing by and this may entice them to come in and try out your salon. Also, your employees could try dressing up in Halloween costumes, as well as potentially doing some unique hairstyles and nails too showcase some new designs and creativity.

Social Media

Another way to make the most of Autumn is to use social media as a free way of advertising. Not only can you reach your current customers but you are able to promote yourself and reach new customers. You could try to promote exclusive Autumn offers or run giveaways which not only rewards your loyal customers but can also help you in reaching new clients through sharing your page. Staying active on social media is really important, especially interacting with your customers. Instagram allows you to post a range of interactive stories such as voting polls and Q&As so you can get feedback from your customers to see what they’re wanting from you. Using these means you can tailor any marketing more specifically to what your customers actually want.

Retail Products

If your salon sells retail products such as sachets of cream or nail polishes, why not offer a promotion on certain ones such as any Autumn themed colours. This may allow you to get rid of any overstock and appeal to customers who do not typically buy products and want to try something new. Showcasing these products on yourself or on social media is a good way of showing the products in action and the potential they have.

SMS Marketing

Now we’ve been out of lockdown for six months, it is a good time to treat your most loyal returning customers with special offers. Our software has a built-in marketing suite which gives you the opportunity to easily use SMS and email marketing. You can choose client groups or make your own in order to send out your message to the group of people it was intended to. For example:

Hi << Customer Forename>>

Thank you for your support over the last 6 months! 10% off your new Autumn look!

<<Company Name>><<Company Contact Details>>

If you're looking for something to help manage your Salon this Autumn, enquire at https://www.salontracker.co.uk/FreeTrial.aspx for your free two-week trial!

If you already have the software and would just like any more Autumn marketing tips, please feel free to give us a call on 0113 350 8230 and we'll be happy to help!

Make the most of the end of this year!

Salon Tracker x

How to Retain Clients

 

Customer retention, or customer loyalty, is an important part of running a salon especially due to the current climate due to COVID-19 and salons having been closed for so long. This week we decided to put together a blog to share our best tips and tricks to keep clients coming into your salon.

Social Media

One of the best, and easiest, ways to keep your clients coming back it to utilise social media. Regular posting of your work and other post relating to your salon means that your customers will keep seeing your posts and this will remind them to keep getting booked in with you. Social media is also a great way to connect and communicate with your clients too. Clients are more likely to return to a salon where they feel comfortable and communicating and interacting with them over social media is a great way to do so.  If you would like some ideas on how to manage and run a social media account effectively for your salon go to www.salontracker.co.uk.news and see the many blogs we’ve written about this. P.s drop us a follow @salontrackersoftware

SMS Marketing

Another way you can keep your customers coming back to your salon is by sending them text message marketing campaigns. The great thing about this is it could be anything you want.  Salon Trackers ‘Marketing Suite’ gives you the option to filter out specific groups of customers to send messages to directly from your system. For example, you could filter out all your best spending customers for that month and send them a text to try and encourage them to get re booked into your salon. Here is an example of an SMS that you could send:

Hi ‘FORENAME’

Thank you for being one of our most loyal customers! As a thank you here’s your voucher for 10% off your next visit!

See you Soon!

YOURSALONNAME YOURSALONNUMBER T’s&C’s Apply

Loyalty Rewards

One thing that customers will always love is to be rewarded for their loyalty. One way you could do this is set up a loyalty scheme or loyalty groups. For example, one way that you could work this is have different packages all depending on how many appointments that they have had with you. You could have gold, silver and bronze packages all which have different levels of rewards for your most loyal customers including discounts off treatments, retail products or even exclusive access to new treatments before your other clients. Having a reward scheme like this will encourage all your customers to stay loyal to your salon and keep coming in as much as possible. Salon Tracker gives you the option to manage this with our groups feature and this means you can just put these customers into the correct rewards group and Salon Tracker will manage this for you!

If you would like any more information on any of these features or would like us to help you get them set up, please give us a call on 0113 350 8230 or drop us an email on info@salontracker.co.uk for any help or training!

Salon Tracker x

Utilising Pinterest for your Salon

When running a salon, social media is one of the most useful tools on offer. Pinterest is one of the world’s biggest social media platforms, with over 416 million monthly active users, but it is often overlooked. Here at Salon Tracker, we believe that Pinterest is useful in so many ways, such as: finding inspiration, showcasing your work and selling your retail products.

Finding Inspiration

Pinterest allows you to create mood boards which you can tailor to your own needs. You are able to search for pins, which are photos that people have uploaded, and add these to your mood boards. Not only does it suggest the current trends to search for, it also allows you to choose your own searches, for example ‘summer nails’. This will bring up lots of different pictures to browse through and you can then pin these to your mood board to refer back to. Once you have added a few pins, it will then also bring up similar images that you be interested in. It’s a fantastic tool for keeping on top of what is trending at the moment.

Not only is it useful for finding inspiration for your treatments, but it is also useful for the interior inspiration for your salon. Whether this is a full salon makeover or simply a bit of seasonal décor, there is bound to be ideas on Pinterest that you can use.

Promoting your company

Another way in which you can use Pinterest to benefit your salon is that you can create ads. These can be done in a few ways such as a quick ad, which is a one-off payment that pushes one of your pins to a wider audience. Another way is campaign creation which is a more in-depth way, in which you can set daily amounts you wish to spend advertising.

Showcasing your work

As well as being able to save other people’s pins, you are able to create your own and share your work. You are able to upload a photo, which you can then add details to, such as what products you have used, and you can also link your website to the pin so that if they click the pin, they can be linked directly to your website. When posting, you have the option to post now or post at a later date so that you can post at times you know that people are more active.

Other image-based social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter do not have a very long post life, meaning that the posts do not stay on peoples feeds for very long. Pinterest however has a much longer post life and can see businesses getting leads up to 30 days after an initial post.

 

If you don't already follow us on Pinterest already, go give us a follow @salontracker and check out the different boards on our page for some inspo!  

If you have questions, feel free to drop us an e-mail at info@salontracker.co.uk or call us on 0113 350 8230.

Salon Tracker X

How you can use Social Media in your Salon!

Social media is everywhere these days, from Instagram to Facebook to Tiktok. There are many ways you can use social media in your salon to stay up to date on recent trends, to show people your work and also to attract new customers. We know that this can be a little daunting if you haven’t done this before so I’m here to share my best tips and tricks for you to use social media for your salon.

Instagram

Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms at the moment with over one billion active users sharing and viewing content each day. One of the best ways to utilise Instagram is to use this as a way to share pictures of your services, whether this be bright colour jobs or some before and afters of clients when they get their services done. Sharing the treatments which you do in your salon on Instagram means customers, both existing and potential can see what you’re capable of and this may persuade them to book an appointment with you. Hashtags are also very useful on Instagram.  Every time you post you should use different hashtag depending on what you’re sharing a picture of. For example, if you’re posting a picture of some nails that have been done in the salon use hashtags like ‘#nails’ and ‘#nailart’ this will mean your posts are more likely to be viewed by more people, even if they don’t follow you.  Finally, the last way you can use Instagram in your salon is the stories feature. Posting stories are a great way to keep your customers updated on what is going on in your salon and also as they only last 24 hours you don’t have to keep them on your feed, Stories are also a good way to do things such as ‘flash sales’ as they’re only available to view for 24 hours you could do a deal on a quiet day for example ‘Today Only, Buy a 30 Minute Course and get a Free Sachet of Tanning Lotion’.

 

Facebook

Facebook is another very popular social media site, especially for salons. Facebooks gives you the opportunity to keep customers updated, display reviews and communicate with your customers all in one place.  Facebook is also a good social media platform to run competitions on. For example, you could run a competition for a free or discounted service in your salon and for you customers to enter they should have to tag some friends and share the post. By asking customers to tag friends and share your post, this means that all the Facebook friends of everyone who had shared that post will see your salon. This is a really good way to get more exposure. Another way to get exposure on Facebook is by using the sponsored posting feature. This does come with a cost but you can spend as much or as little as you like on this. You can push your posts to a target audience of your choice so more people, apart from those who already follow you, will see your posts. As mentioned before, Facebook is also a great place for communicating with your customers, whether this be responding to reviews that they have left you or responding to any messages they have left you. Facebook gives you the option to do all of this in one place.

 

Tiktok

Tiktok is a fairly new social media platform which exploded in popularity over lockdown.  The basic idea of this is to share short videos of whatever you want with popular videos making it to the ‘For You Page’.  Already there are a lot of salon accounts on the platform from nail techs showing viewers the process of doing a client’s nails, hair salons showing some before ad afters and other types of salons sharing tips and tricks to views about things such as tanning safety and how to get the smoothest finish on your foundation.  This platform is very popular, especially with the younger generation with some videos reaching up to a million views, so why not get involved!

 

There are many other options for what social media platforms you could use in your salon for example twitter is also a good one but these are just some of our favourites.

If you’re not already make sure you’re following us on all out social media accounts @salontrackersoftware on Instagram, Salon Tracker Software on Facebook and @SalonTrackerLTD on X to keep up with everything new at Salon Tracker.

 

If you would like any more tips or tricks on how to use social media in your salon don’t hesitate to drop us a message on any of our social media accounts or call on 0113 350 8230.

Salon Tracker x

 

How to market your salon during the Halloween period with the circumstances which is Covid-19

This year has been extremely different for everyone, from how we carry out our daily activities to attending the shops and salons. It has also changed how we are able to spend our beloved holidays, including Halloween, the festival second to the Christmas holiday season. There are still certain restrictions in place which prevent us from attending Halloween events, such as parties and this means that people aren’t attending appointments to have their makeup done for the evening events - therefore there may not be a Halloween rush as large as last years. To prevent these restrictions from affecting your business, it is essential that you market other options to your clients and keep them up to date with any changes in regards to what services you are able to carry out, or if you have to close temporarily. Whether you have our Salon software or not, the ideas listed below will be relevant and worth a try!

In order to maintain functional operation of the salon it is important that the ambience within the salon is high priority, as it can help prompt consumer buying habits. Due to all the distress of the current situation which is Covid-19, doing a good dead such as offering free retail products or when it is Halloween, all employees could wear fancy dress, to lift the spirits of the customers to help create an uplifting atmosphere. Focus on window decorations, make sure there is a theme behind each one and this will ensure that clients are aware you are still able to offer Halloween treatments that oblige by the current legislations.

Offering exclusive offers just for Halloween is another way to promote your business during these difficult times. Promoting these products and services allows you to maximize your salon and its assets, an example could be promoting longer lasting treatments such as facials, manicures, eyelash treatments and many more. Instead of prompting Halloween nail art, you should promote autumnal artwork and colours as these are longer lasting because they apply to more than just one day.

Another technique to marketing your salon during the Halloween season should be to upsell retail products, as all salons and high street stores will be competing to sell out their remaining Halloween products. How can you make your salon stand out? A fantastic idea would be to market your products in a more visual way, as we say “a picture paints a thousand words”. An example of this would be to create a photo book showing the Halloween services you have carried out through the years and list the retail products that were used within this treatment.

Display tables are another crucial aspect in promoting your salon, arrange these so that they show the retail products and gift packages that you offer and surround them with Halloween accessories. The way you decorate your display tables is important, it must have a theme that is carried throughout.

Social media is the main tool to promoting anything that happens within your salon, an idea could be to do a raffle were the winner receives a free treatment of their choice and where all the money is donated to a charity that is suffering during these horrible times. Communicate with your clients show them the decorations and offers that you have in place!


If you’re looking for a software to help you manage your business this festive season don’t hesitate to contact us on 0113 350 8230 and we will be happy to assist.


Make the most of this year!


Salon Tracker X

How to make this Autumn your best one yet!

I know you'll all be just as shocked as I am when I say that Summer is officially over and as of last week, Autumn has officially begun! Last week also marked 6 months since the UK was put into full lockdown and everyone's world was turned upside down. Now you are open and in full swing, how about we make up for all that lost time and make this your best Autumn yet? After all, the autumnal vibes are our favourite!

 

Lets start with a start with a few marketing tips:

Back to School Bundle 

This is one for the Mums and Dads that suddenly have a lot more time on their hands! After 6 months of no school I think all those Mums and Dads out there deserve a bit of a treat... A back to school mini bundle could be a great idea for your salon. For example, offering a package deal with some mini treatments, such as lash and brow tints, could increase your profit and help you gain a selection of new clients that you may not have previously had. Pairing this with a ‘back to school’ pamper day including a range of the different treatments you offer would be a great start as it really encourages them to book for a relaxing day after 6 months that properly felt like a decade for them!

Halloween

Although Halloween may not be the same this year, it's still a Holiday that everyone loves and why not make the most of it? Advertising early your Halloween makeup pictures will get people interested and make them want to plan ahead. You could even do a petrifying package deal such as Makeup and spooky hair for a set price and why not throw in a Halloween goody bag full of Halloween themed treats or retail products? 

What platforms can you use to get the message out?

Facebook and Instagram

Facebook and Instagram are the top social media platforms to advertise your business on.
Most importantly, they are free! Just a simple post on facebook advertising what you are going to be doing this Autumn will go a long way, followers of the page will see it and following that they may be inclined to share it with Family and Friends which could reach 1000's of new clients. Similar to instagram where you can carry out interactive stories which will engage your followers. You could do a vote story or an answer box story with the caption 'what would you like to see from this salon this Autumn' then not only are you drawing the readers in, but you are also finding out what your target market would like to see! All this client research for free - you can't go wrong. 

TikTok

Now i'm sure you'll already know that whilst boredom was taking over in lockdown, TikTok the video app became very popular and people all over the world were doing dance routines and make-up tutorials. This extremely popular platform would be a great way for your Salon to advertise their services such as autumnal nails, Halloween makeup and hair styles due to the sheer popularity of the app. I'll work a treat!

SMS Marketing

The advantage of SMS marketing is that you can target specific customers or audiences. For example, if you wanted to target customers who haven’t visited in the last 3 months, you can do this through our filters. Our software has a built-in marketing suite which gives you the opportunity to easily use SMS and email marketing. You can choose client groups or make your own in order to send out your message to the group of people it was intended to. For example: 

Hi << Customer Forename>> 

We miss you! Book in advance for a space for your new Autumn look! 

<<Company Name>><<Company Contact Details>> 

As you see, summer finishing may put a frown on many faces but with these tips you could turn it into an incredible opportunity for your salon and help you get back on track before the year is out!

If you're looking for something to help manage your Salon this Autumn enquire at https://www.salontracker.co.uk/FreeTrial.aspx for your free 2 week trial!

If you already have the software and would just like a bit of free training please feel free to give us a call on 0113 350 8230 and we'll be happy to help!

Make the most of the end of this year!

Salon Tracker x

Social Media Tips For Your Salon!

Despite everything that’s happened this year, it’s still flown by with Autumn right around the corner. So, it’s time to gear up for the end of year rush and make sure that your calendar has no blank space! I’m sure you all know the huge benefits of using social media to promote your salon and your services, so today were going give you our top tips for maintaining your social media presence and increase your client base.

Facebook

As a salon owner, Facebook is the perfect platform and tool to promote your salon, its ideal to stay connected with your clients, as well as enabling you to reach out to new customers. Setting up your salon Facebook page is just step one of successfully promoting your business, the key thing is to stay consistent with your posting. You don’t want to go too long without updating your clients, but you also don’t want to post too much that those following your page become annoyed with your spam, it’s all about finding the perfect balance.

A great feature on Facebook is the scheduling tool, this is perfect for getting ahead and ensuring that you aren’t forgetting to post, and you can plan for things such as offers or days you may be closed. When posting, you want to think about when your clients are likely to be on Facebook and scrolling through their homepage, early mornings, lunchtime and evenings are often the best with the typical 9-5 working schedule.

Sprout social found that the best day to post is Wednesday, and looking at the engagement it their research suggests that late morning/early afternoon will result in the highest engagement. However, its always best to base it on your followers, maybe try out a few different times and see which performs best. You also have the insights feature on Facebook, allowing you to view the performance of your posts, on all posts you can see the number of users it has reached and how many users have engaged with the post. Again, this is perfect to track how well your posts are doing, allowing you to improve certain types of posts if you notice the statistics are lower in comparison to others.





Despite being a newer feature, Facebook Stories are also a great tool, as they will always show at the very top of the customers Facebook home page. This not only means that they’re more likely to see your salon name popping up, but it’s also great for posting opening times, any booking openings from cancellations and any limited time deals as the stories will only remain posted for 24 hours.

The next thing you want to focus on is the content you post, you want this to be unique and different from your competitors, this will make your posts more eye-catching, hopefully resulting in new and existing customers clicking through to your page. There are plenty of great pages that you can create posts on, such are Pixlr (https://pixlr.com/) and Adobe Spark (https://spark.adobe.com/sp/). Adobe Spark has hundreds of templates that you can redesign to be more suited to your salon.

Instagram

Instagram has become another great platform to grow your salon business on, making it the perfect platform to not only post before and after images, but also fun and relatable content for new and existing customers to enjoy. With it being owned by Facebook, there are a lot of similarities that can be found, making it easy to switch between the two and keep users up to date across both platforms.

Similar to Facebook, and maybe they work even better, is Instagram Stories! Again, these only last for 24 hours, so they’re great to post the any daily updates on appointments, offers and even resharing posts of your customers that have tagged you. Stories can also be shared between users, giving the opportunity for one of your followers to easily spread word of your salon by sharing a post to their friend(s).

Unfortunately, Instagram doesn’t have a built-in feature to schedule posts, like Facebook does, however there is a great third-party alternative. The app ‘Later’ (https://later.com/) links straight to your Instagram page, allowing you to schedule posts for weeks and months in advance. This is a great tool to use during a quiet period, in order to ensure that you are ahead on your posts before you’re too busy and don’t have the time to do it. If you wanted to schedule all of your social media platforms in one place, Later enables you to do so, this may make it easier that having the separate scheduling on Facebook, as you won’t need to keep switching in and out of apps whilst planning your posts.

To grow your page to a bigger audience, hashtags are the ideal method, as this helps non-followers find your page and images, the more hashtags you use, the more users will see your post. It’s important that the hashtags relate to the image and to your salon, using local based hashtags is also a great idea as this will result in people in close proximity to the salon viewing and finding your page. If you don’t want to include hashtags in the caption of the image, you can always add them into the comments after you have posted. It’s also key not to use the exact same hashtags in every image, these should be changed and tweaked depending on the image you are posting in order to reach the best target audience.

Finally…a theme! Although not super important, it does always look nice for customers viewing your page. It may be best to stick with the colours that can be found within your salon, then everything is seamless both in the salon and across your social media platforms.

Hopefully these tips have been helpful for you, in order to maximise your social media presence! If you are wanting to take a look at our Salon Tracker softwae, we do offer a free demo and 2 week trial, so don’t hesitate to contact us to get booked in! You can call us on 0113 3508230 or catch us via email at info@salontracker.co.uk.

Salon Tracker x

Are you ready for the GDPR? We are!

With less than 2 months to go until the big change we thought we’d give you a run through on what we, here at Salon Tracker have done in order to be fully GDPR compliant. Meaning you can put your trust in our Software and put your mind at ease. 

If you’re unaware of what the GDPR actually is, then it is an act which is put in place of the current data protection act 1998 and will be standing as of May 2018. The data protection act 1998 is very much still standing, the GDPR is just added security on top of what was already there.

Want further information? Visit our own previous blog: http://ow.ly/Z4w130iPhLI or the official GDPR homepage: https://www.eugdpr.org/.

So, here’s everything you need to know:

• We have made sure that the marketing consent boxes which serve the purpose of including your clients in mailing letters and SMS texts are now unticked by default, meaning the client now has to opt in to marketing by ticking the box themselves and wouldn’t be included in a salon mailing list under false-impression/ not agreeing to it. 

• We have also implemented a “lock down” on all of your clients given data for anyone that has a user logon lower than a manager status. This means that the clients data requires extra authentication in order for staff members to access any client data by “unlocking” the data for it to be revealed. Every unlock of data performed by all staff members is logged and can be viewed in an audit report as often as the owner wish to sees it. Meaning that you can monitor when any client’s data is being viewed and whether or not is it being viewed without reason allowing you to follow up accordingly. Furthermore, this feature is very useful for safety reasons too. For example, if a client has an allergy to a certain product, then the information regarding the allergy would be stored on their client card, therefore every practical employee must check their card so they can avoid giving them an allergic reaction. If a situation comes up where this was to happen, the owner can check the audit report to determine whether or not their employee checked the client card. And every employee account is password protected so there’s no excuse for mistakes, making your salon a much safer place. 

• We have also put into practice a “master delete button” which if functional for ‘forgetting’ clients details at their request. Don’t worry, under the GDPR you are still inclined to keep all legal information such as the signing of disclaimers, patch tests and treatment consent which can be stored securely in an external format to our software. However, you may need to be in touch with a solicitor for further advice should you need to keep these legal documents. 

• Under the GDPR, clients have the right to request a SAR (Subject access request) at any given time. The Salon then has to product ALL information they hold on the client free of charge and within 30 days. Now you might think that sounds like a timely effort and a costly one… but with our software you can do an extensive customer history report within the click of a button and then export it straight to print, the joys of technology! 

• It’s not new but golden for the GDPR! – Finger print reader. We integrate our software with our very own fingerprint reader (professional package and above) which makes the security of client data extremely safe with the help of personal biometric data. Clients can lock their data to their individual fingerprint meaning only themselves can access it and it’s as simple as walking into the salon and applying their finger print to the reader which automatically brings up their client card, perfect! 

And that's a wrap! A fully GDPR compliant solution to answer all your Salon needs, taking the weight off your shoulders and giving you the confidence when May 25th comes around!

Any questions? Email christie@salontracker.co.uk or call 0113 350 8230, we're always happy to help. 

Salon Tracker x